Constitutional bodies to get back budget for unfilled positions — Drilon

The budget for unfilled positions initially withheld from several constitutional bodies may be eventually returned to them, Sen. Franklin Drilon said Thursday. Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee, had earlier announced that the budget for 66,957 unfilled positions — estimated to be around P23 billion — will be placed into what is known as a miscellaneous personnel benefit fund (MPBF). He said money will only be released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) when a position gets filled, which he said will stop the conversion of personnel funds in the national government. But after several lawmakers and autonomous government agencies questioned the move, Drilon on Thursday said they will "adhere to the Constitutional provision which grants fiscal autonomy to the Constitutional bodies." "We'll respect fiscal autonomy, fiscal independence," he said. Among the agencies that have fiscal autonomy are the judiciary, Commission on Human Rights, Commission on Audit, Commission on Elections, Congress, and the Civil Service Commission. Drilon, however, noted that they will have a "thorough" reporting system on how the budget allocated to each agency will be spent. "We have the right to require that such usage of the funds be made transparent," he said. On the other hand, Drilon did not give any indication that they will increase the budget for state universities and colleges (SUC) despite student rallies calling for such. He said the budget of SUCS is "not only what appears" in the General Appropriations Act of 2012. According to Drilon, a good portion of the SUCs' operating income would come from internally-generated sources like tuition and from the income generated from the assets of SUCs. "What we have required from SUCs would be a detailed report of how much income they gather from their operations," he said. Drilon, meanwhile, said they hope to finish all the budget hearings by next week. He also said that they expect to receive the proposed 2012 budget from the House of Representatives by October 11 or 12. He said he hopes to sponsor the budget on the floor on November 8 or 9, or days after Congress comes back from recess. To do this, he said he expects other items on the agenda — the debate on the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) bill, among them — to take a backseat for the meantime. "That is the tradition. We have to do that because we have to approve the budget by December... so we will have a budget by January," Drilon said. — KBK, GMA News